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  • FTA Highlight No. 2 – Tree Seed and Seedling Systems for Resilience and Productivity

FTA Highlight No. 2 – Tree Seed and Seedling Systems for Resilience and Productivity
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FTA communications

Tree seeds and seedlings for planting purposes are the starting point from which farmers, foresters and others are able to grow trees. They are produced and made available through “seed systems”. These seed systems have been a major topic of work by FTA in the last decade because of the constraints faced by actors on the ground in obtaining tree-planting material corresponding to their needs and of good quality.

Growers do not always know or fully consider what trees to plant, and where, so that they are effectively matched to planting environments and purposes.

The problem of tree seed sourcing is becoming ever more acute due to the increased demand for seeds to meet now-massive global commitments such as the Bonn Challenge to forest landscape restoration and other tree planting initiatives.

Download the volume! [PDF]
As part of “FTA’s highlights of a decade,” a new series focusing on its main results since being established in 2011, the FTA program is now publishing the volume on Tree Seed and Seedling Systems for Resilience and Productivity.

FTA’s work on the topic seeks to address twin concerns: how to make available quality tree planting material; and how to ensure that tree seeds and seedlings are planted in the right places for the right purposes. If these concerns are met, and principles of good restoration practice are followed, the detrimental ecological effects that may be caused by inappropriate ‘restoration’ can be avoided and genuine restoration can be achieved.

Addressing the supply bottleneck is a key challenge to current global forest landscape restoration programmes becoming successful. To ensure supply it is necessary to realize the potential of many more rural organizations, small-scale private nurseries and local communities to effectively participate in tree seed systems.

Photo gallery

The recent greater focus on accountability in tree planting provides new opportunities to improve tree seed sourcing. ICRAF’s Genetic Resources Unit (GRU) conserves and supplies for research and direct use both tree seeds and seedlings; its field genebanks (see Figure 1) feature more than 80 tree species. The CATIE Forest Seed Bank in Costa Rica reaches more than 170 clients in 20 countries with tree seed. Both ICRAF and CATIE are managing partners of FTA.

Unfortunately, existing approaches do not meet the need for tree seed supply that is well matched to planting sites and purposes, or that addresses livelihood and environmental goals. Growers often end up planting whatever tree seeds and seedlings they can find. A lack of attention to what is planted in restoration initiatives, and the problems this may cause, is increasingly being raised as an important issue. Through its research, FTA seeks to improve on the poor current situation. For example, ICRAF’s Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolios (PATSPO) project focuses on enhancing tree seed sourcing to support Ethiopia’s forest landscape restoration.

Recent preliminary work by FTA showed that the savings (through better survival rates of trees) and increased incomes (from increased production) from better seedling establishment and growth far surpassed the extra expense of quality tree seed sourcing in restoration programmes. More advanced calculations, including estimates based on African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) activities, suggested that an extra cost per seedling of less than 5% could generate more than USD 5 billion of additional income for tree growers.

The African Orphan Crops Consortium works to fill production gaps for 101 lesser-used food crops, including tree crops, that have potential to address nutritional deficiencies, by improving support to breeders. FTA researchers developed and implemented the supply of “fruit tree portfolios” — combined with other plant foods, these are sets of trees that supply required nutrients to local communities year-round. FTA also engaged in communication campaigns such as the From Tree To Fork, which aimed to raise awareness about the properties of underutilized species through the engaging use of graphics and fun messaging.

Rural resource centres (RRCs), also developed by FTA researchers, supply food tree seedlings and instruct people in tree propagation and other skills. FTA’s tree nursery work in Viet Nam has promoted the widespread planting of the indigenous son tra fruit tree (H’mong apple, Docynia indica), and has taught more than 1,000 participants about topics such as agroforestry systems.

FTA scientists applied the nurseries of excellence (NOEL) approach in Indonesia. A NOEL project on Sulawesi produced more than two million quality seedlings of more than 50 tree species.

An important part of FTA’s work is engaging with national partners to help develop policies that support more effective integrated tree seed systems. In work led by Bioversity International, FTA has developed a set of indicators for this purpose, and has applied them in seven countries in Latin America.

FTA tools for bringing existing knowledge resources together to support the better choice of what trees to plant, and where, include the Agroforestry Species Switchboard. Genetic sequencing for improved varieties is another prominent FTA research domain. Recently FTA scientists collaborated in the establishment of the reference genome of the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa). An interesting interview with the lead scientists of this paper is also available here.

Scaling up high-quality tree seed and seedling supply efforts will Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Development of Forest Genetic Resources

Download the publication to find out how more about FTA’s 10 years of research on tree seed and seedling systems!

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  • Final harvest for the 2021 From Tree to Fork campaign

Final harvest for the 2021 From Tree to Fork campaign
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FTA communications

The From Tree to Fork campaign is wrapping up for the season, and it’s been a fruitful harvest so far. The 18 fruits and vegetables released up until now bring more visibility to the important contributions of tree foods to livelihoods, cultural traditions, food security, nutrition and more.

For example, did you know that Camu-camu (Myrciaria dubia) contains 30-60x more vitamin C than the same serving of oranges? Each fruit in the campaign collected trivia like this with engaging infographics and scientist-reviewed facts about some of the most unknown and underutilized fruits and vegetables from trees. Much of this information came from CIFOR-ICRAF databases including the Priority Food Tree and Crop Food Composition Database, the Tree Functional Attributes and Ecological Database and the AgroforesTree Database.

Launched earlier this year, From Tree to Fork is aligned with other important initiatives on the global agenda including the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (IYFV) — a time to raise awareness for how trees can help make food systems more sustainable and resilient worldwide. This year (2021) also marks the start of the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which has direct links to food trees and agroforestry because people are more likely to restore landscapes with trees that have multiple benefits for human health and well-being.

READ THE FTTF LAUNCH BLOG

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A few of the scientists who worked on the campaign also shared their personal experiences with these valuable tree foods.

“As a huge lover of chocolate, I was delighted to discover that ‘chocolate’ could also be made out of a whole different species [Copoazu (Theobroma grandiflorum)!” said FTA scientist, Elisabeth Lagneaux. “Try it if you can.”

Michael Brady, a CIFOR principal scientist and leader of FTA’s Flagship 3, has a similarly positive experience associated with Sago, a starch made from the trunk of the Sago palm tree (Metroxylon sagu):

“I did my graduate research in Sumatra and met my wife there,” he said. “During that time, I have many happy memories of eating Pempek, a famous dish made by mixing Sago flour and fish that is eaten throughout the island.”

These colourful images and key messages are also featured as part of a virtual exhibit on FTA’s new Google Arts & Culture page. This display, along with seven other stories on the page, champion the importance of forests, trees and agroforestry to respond to environmental crises. Also, check out the recently released FTA Highlights Volume No. 5 on Food Security and Nutrition to learn more about the work scientists have done on tree foods over the last 10 years.

VIEW THE VIRTUAL EXHIBIT

READ THE HIGHLIGHTS VOL. 5

In 2021 we brought you 18 infographics and more than 50 eCards and key messages on particular tree foods. There are many more underutilized fruits and vegetables that the campaign was not able to cover this year, and we hope to bring you more in 2022. Here’s a taste of what we could serve you…

  1. Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes)
  2. Ungurahui (Oenocarpus bataua)
  3. Monkey orange (Strychnos cocculoids)
  4. Safou (Dacryodes edulis)
  5. Marula (Sclerocarya birrea)
  6. Kiawe (Prosopis pallida)
  7. Wild plumb (Ximenia americana)
  8. Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa)
  9. Cherimoya (Annona cherimola)
  10. Bengal quince (Aegle marmelos)
  11. Abiu (Pouteria caimito)

 

Enjoy your holidays and make sure you treat yourselves a different fruit every day!

 

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  • Top of the tree: FTA in 2018

Top of the tree: FTA in 2018

A variety of mango grows on a farm in Machakos County, Kenya. Photo by ICRAF
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

The year 2018 saw the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) chalk up some notable achievements in the worlds of sustainable development, food security and addressing climate change.

A variety of mango grows on a farm in Machakos County, Kenya. Photo by ICRAF

A number of the program’s research findings reverberated throughout the scientific community, impacting discussions at major events and informing work on the ground.

Read on to find out which news articles, research publications, presentations and videos were most-viewed on the FTA website throughout the year.

Gender, agroforestry and combating deforestation were strong points of interest among news articles, topped off by research on orphan crops – underutilized crops that are being brought out of the shadows by plant breeding – which was also covered by The Economist and the Financial Times. The 10 most-viewed news articles on the FTA website in 2018 are as follows.

  1. Orphan crops for improving diets
  2. The power of science to halt deforestation
  3. Climate change atlas presents suitability maps for agroforestry species in Central America
  4. Halting deforestation is ‘everyone’s fight’
  5. FTA’s research domain on livelihood systems receives strong rating
  6. Picks and spades can triple farmers’ yields in Kenyan drylands
  7. Good investments in agriculture and forestry can benefit smallholders and landscapes
  8. Innovation and excellence from chocolate producers
  9. Agroforestry offers pathways to sustainable landscape restoration
  10. Woman on a mission: Pushing for rights and a seat at the decision-making table
Findings have shed new light on the role of forests and trees in the climate debate. Photo by Eko Prianto/CIFOR

Research publications are of course not only viewed via the FTA website but also via the websites of partner institutions or scientific journals.

Of those collated on the FTA website, however, the top 10 most-viewed encompassed ecosystem services, value chains and climate, along with the relationship between trees and water – a popular topic that was the subject of a two-day symposium in 2017 and a follow-up discussion forum in 2018:

  1. Co-investment in ecosystem services: global lessons from payment and incentive schemes
  2. Analysis of gender research on forest, tree and agroforestry value chains in Latin America
  3. Decision support tools for forest landscape restoration: Current status and future outlook
  4. Certifying Environmental Social Responsibility: Special Issue
  5. Suitability of key Central American agroforestry species under future climates: an atlas
  6. Landscape Restoration in Kenya: Addressing gender equality
  7. Forest ecosystem services and the pillars of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness
  8. Tropical forest-transition landscapes: a portfolio for studying people, tree crops and agro-ecological change in context
  9. Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world
  10. Bridging molecular genetics and participatory research: how access and benefit-sharing stimulate interdisciplinary research for tropical biology and conservation
Strengthening women’s tenure and rights to forests and trees and their participation in decision making.

As always, FTA scientists presented their work to colleagues and to broader audiences at workshops and events around the world. The top 10 most-viewed presentations of those collected on the FTA website looked at governance, REDD+ and tenure.

  1. Comparing governance reforms to restore the forest commons in Nepal, China and Ethiopia
  2. A personal take on forest landscapes restoration in Africa
  3. Strengthening women’s tenure and rights to forests and trees and their participation in decision making
  4. Are there differences between men and women in REDD+ benefit sharing schemes?
  5. Conflict in collective land and forest formalization: a preliminary analysis
  6. Implications of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) for trans-boundary agricultural commodities, forests and smallholder farmers
  7. Reconciling policy and practice in the co-management of forests in indigenous territories
  8. Informing gender-responsive climate policy and action
  9. Assessing REDD+ readiness to maximize climate finance impact
  10. Forest policy reform to enhance smallholder participation in landscape restoration: The Peruvian case
Drone technology for science.

FTA’s partner institutions produced compelling video content in 2018, drawing in viewers interested in drones, nutrition, landscapes and more. The top 10 most-viewed videos posted on the FTA website are as follows.

  1. Agroforestry in landscape restoration for livelihoods, climate and ecosystem services
  2. Drone technology for science
  3. Daniel Murdiyarso talks about the interaction between land and oceans
  4. Expansion of oil palm plantations into forests appears to be changing local diets in Indonesia
  5. Lessons learned from REDD+: progress in 8 countries and the way forward
  6. Restoring landscapes, respecting rights
  7. Creating a movement on sustainable landscapes
  8. Developing and applying an approach for the sustainable management of landscapes
  9. Social inclusion, equity and rights in the context of restoration – lessons from the ground
  10. Integrated landscapes approaches: From theory to practice

Finally, a special mention goes to a well-received infographic from FTA’s gender team: Gender matters in forest landscape restoration.

As the program forges ahead into 2019, it expects to see a continued presence at high-level events and even wider dissemination of its work, in line with its innovative research projects ongoing around the world to further the contributions of forests, trees and agroforestry to sustainable development.

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  • Plant breeders contribute to achieving food security across Africa

Plant breeders contribute to achieving food security across Africa

Participants take part in a practical session during the course. Photo by ICRAF
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
The third class of graduates from the UC Davis Africa Plant Breeding Academy pose for a group photo. Photo by ICRAF

Thirty-four plant breeders from 18 countries graduated from the UC Davis African Plant Breeding Academy in May 2018.

The advanced plant breeding course was delivered by the Seed Biotechnology Center of the University of California Davis, in collaboration with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC).

The course, hosted by one of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry’s (FTA) partner institutions — the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) — in Kenya, equips practicing African plant breeders with advanced theory and technologies in plant breeding, quantitative genetics, statistics and experimental design to support critical decisions. This was the third cohort of the course, with participants drawn from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The program was delivered by a team of tutors and complemented by guest speakers, including Leena Tripathi of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) who covered banana improvement through transformation and gene editing, Damaris Achieng Odeny of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT) on finger millet genomics, Dusty Vyas of LGC Genomics on genotyping sequencing and DNA analysis, and Alex Lipka of the University of Illinois on genomic selection. Participants also visited the International Livestock Research Institute’s Trepathi lab and glasshouse.

The plant breeders presented various proposals, explaining how they would put their newly acquired skills into practice. Mayada Beshir of the Agricultural Research Corporation in Sudan and Ermias Abate Desta of the Amhara Agricultural Research Institute of Ethiopia were each awarded US$5,000 from Mars Incorporated and Illumina for their winning proposals.

“Sorghum is the most important crop for us in Sudan and is widely produced by smallholders. We are experiencing the effects of climate change, as everywhere, and are observing new traits or stresses that have not been seen before. Sorghum productivity is declining yet the government is working hard to avail land, water and inputs,” said Bashir.

“As a breeder going through this training, my role is to help the farmer. The farmer will consume part of the harvest and sell the rest for income. I will produce a better variety of sorghum that is resistant to the stresses we are seeing right now and add nutrient value with better yield.”

Read more: Orphan crops for improving diets

“Tef is a staple crop and is grown only in Ethiopia,” said Desta. “It is an orphan crop because it hasn’t captured the attention of the international scientific community. My work is to identify varieties of tef that are tolerant to soil acidity, a common problem in highly productive areas of the country. I will use my prize money to produce soil acidity-tolerant genotypes of tef. Smallholders cannot afford the lime that needs to be applied to acidic soils for amelioration. Acid-tolerant varieties of tef will help as a management strategy and improve their yields.”

“The UC Davis African Plant Breeding Academy is part of the African Orphan Crops Consortium,” explained Allen van Deynze, a primary instructor at the academy. “The goal of the consortium is to make nutritious crops productive for Africa. The plant breeding academy is delivering food security in the continent. The people here today are the ones who are going to make the difference. Those who have passed through the academy are the ones who have taken on the challenge to make sure that everyone has nutritious food on their table.”

Participants take part in a practical session during the course. Photo by ICRAF

“When you go back, remember all that you have learned will be wasted if you fight, compete or do not collaborate,” said Tony Simons, director general of ICRAF. “It is a great honor to partner with all the institutions that support this program, because out of all the initiatives that ICRAF has implemented in the last 40 years, this has been one of the most impactful.”

Recounting the start of the consortium that led to the UC Davis African Plant Breeding Academy, Howard Shapiro, chief scientist at Mars Incorporated, acknowledged the organizations and individuals who contributed to the consortium. Of the 101 crops that were selected for sequencing, 47 are trees and the remainder are annual crops.

“No one had ever considered to do this amount of research on crops,” noted Shapiro. “Major foundations and organizations chose one crop — cassava, maize — and that is all they work on. Our idea was that we could fix the nutritional productivity of 101 food crops that are not only the backbone of rural Africa, but are also important in urban centers. An idea of paradise is that we can end chronic hunger and malnutrition by improving the nutritional quality and productivity of the 101 food crops. All those who have passed through the academy are the ones who will deliver this paradise.”

“We have sequenced 10 species for the AOCC,” noted Xin Liu of BGI. “We are trying to release data as soon as possible. You can combine this data for better application and breeding processes for all the crops. We made a commitment three years ago to sequence 101 crops. We have our own sequencers that can be used to generate more data and we would like to contribute all the science and technology we can to this consortium.”

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a primary partner of the academy and has sponsored 31 plant breeders of the second and third cohorts. It also funded master and doctoral courses for over 400 of the 500 plant breeders in Africa. So far, 18 countries have released over 600 varieties of crops.

Read more: Tree seed selection, genome sequencing, improvement of priority species and more

“We realized that the breeding field keeps changing. This course has helped us keep up and modernize our breeding efforts,” said Rufaro Madakadze, program officer of AGRA’s Africa Seed System. “We fund training to develop technologies that people will use.”

Speaking on behalf of the class, Maureen Atemkeng of Nigeria expressed gratitude to the academy, particularly for the opportunity to interact with international experts. She added that the course helped in building principles of efficiency, responsibility and sustainability for the next generation.

“Hunger and malnutrition can be eliminated in our lifetime,” said Rita Mumm, director and primary instructor of the academy. “The vision of the African Plant Breeding Academy is to train 150 plant breeders. Graduates, you will continue to work together, contribute your talent to teams, and join the African Association of Plant Breeders. I exhort you to mentor the next generation of plant breeders. Share your knowledge and experience.”

In closing, Ramni Jamnadass, coleader of ICRAF’s Tree Productivity and Diversity research unit that hosts the AOCC, encouraged the graduates to contribute to breeding programs that will banish food and nutrition insecurity in Africa.

The course is delivered in three two-week sessions spread over 18 months at the ICRAF campus in Nairobi. Since its inception in 2013, 89 plant breeders have successfully completed the course and covered more than 99 species, of which 57 are African orphan crops.

By Susan Onganyo, originally published at ICRAF’s Agroforestry World. 

This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, which is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.

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